Country music star Granger Smith is walking away from his successful career to peach in his local church.
“This message is so difficult to post,” Smith said on social media while announcing the move.
“The words for this caption are so hard to find.
“Not because I don’t believe in the truth of them, but because this marks the end of the longest era in my life!
“Touring…24 years of it.
“This summer will be my last tour. I am so encouraged and hopeful and excited and joyful about the next chapter, but to a large extent, I have no idea what it will look like.
“I just want to glorify God the best way that I can.
“I want to learn and grow and serve my local church and allow my pastors to equip and affirm those next steps.
“Lord willing, I want to be used to help people find their purpose.”
I’m preaching from James 1:2-4 this Sunday at Adventure Church in Lewis Center, Ohio. Hope y’all join! pic.twitter.com/LOvJtwTPfG
— Granger Smith (@GrangerSmith) April 19, 2023
He told Fox News: “I have a huge feeling of relief now that.
“I’ve been able to tell the world exactly what my intentions are and what I’m going to do.
“For the last few years, a handful of people had known that I was probably leaving country music.
“And it’s difficult to get on stage in different environments, in different cities and play music for people knowing, as I’m looking into their eyes, that I’m probably going to tell them in a few months that I’m not doing this anymore.
“That’s a difficult way to live. And so, there’s a big sense of relief now that I’ve told everyone.
“I wrestled with the idea for a long time that this doesn’t feel right.
“A lot of people will probably think, ‘Why don’t you just sing country music, but talk about God on the stage?’
“Or, ‘Why don’t you sing a couple of hymns on the stage? And that fixes everything.’
“I wrestled with that for a couple of years.
“A lot of pastors and preachers told me, ‘Country music is your ministry, brother. You’re in a dark world. You’re bringing light to a dark world. You’re going into bars and stages where people might not have heard the message of Christ, and you get to speak it – that is your ministry.’
“I believed it,” he said.
“And part of me still does believe that. But here’s the deal – it wasn’t ever about that.
“It wasn’t ever about finding the best platform to tell people about Christ.
“The first thing that needed to happen was I needed to make myself smaller because I was exalting myself on the stage. I was glorifying myself.
“I was seeking praise from people. And by doing that, it doesn’t matter if I was proclaiming Christ, because I was doing it the wrong way.
“I was proclaiming Christ from a self-exalting platform. And that was the contradiction I finally had to come to terms with.
“I might have a stage down the road, but right now I need to completely surrender that and give it over to God.”
“There’s a lot I’m going to miss in country music.
“I’ve been doing it for a long time, for multiple decades, for a reason. It wasn’t because I was collecting a paycheck, because most of those years I wasn’t.
“I do it – and I did it – because I loved telling stories through songs that people could relate to,” he said.
“That’s what I loved most about it – seeing those reactions from people as we took them on a journey.”
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